The Ring
by Jinx 96
Summary: This started out as just a one shot. It's about the story of the Joker and his wife. Ophelia has run out of the apartment she's shared with Jack into the rain clutching her wedding ring and desperate to get away. These are pretty much just her thoughts and memories of the time they'd spent together. R&R please. This is a very weird story with a very weird/crazy OC.
1. Chapter 1

Ophelia held her ring tightly to her chest as she stood in the pouring rain debating going back into the rundown apartment she shared with Jack. She saw him in her mind's eye, a shock with bleeding lips and pleading eyes. She felt like she didn't even know him anymore. She could've sworn she'd even heard him start to chuckle as she swiftly left the room.

She closed her eyes. She wouldn't be going back there.

But where else could she possibly go? There was her brother's but-

She heard the door up the steps of the fire escape. She held her breath as she pressed herself to the wall allowing the bricks to dig into her back. She stifled the urge to gasp in pain.

"Ophelia!" He called. A shiver went down her spine. "Ophelia!"

Please don't come down the steps, she prayed.

In truth, she was a very weak and shy person, she still didn't know how she ended up with Jack. She'd met him in high school. He'd been tall, awkward, and people usually avoided him because of his. . . Unusual personality. As the years went by, however, he'd grown more confident and seemed to display his strange ways with pride. He took a liking to the colors green and purple and started to wear suits in those colors. He started carrying a switchblade. Strangely, he even grew to be more intimidating though no one had any idea how.

One time, Ophelia had been careless and wandered down a dark alley. A man had pulled a gun on her and Jack saved her. By slitting his throat. That was how they'd met. After, Jack had asked her out to dinner and the rest was history.

Now, you must be asking what kind of idiot doesn't see the warning signs of a doomed relationship with a sociopath in this story. Ophelia would be trying to figure this out years later when she met him again on the rooftop of a condemned apartment complex.

She reached up to cover her scarred face with her hands, dropping the ring in the process. She waited until she heard him shut the door before starting to leave her spot. But then she remembered the ring.

The symbol that started it all.

She remembered the day she'd accepted him completely, the one day he'd smiled so honestly. It was his birthday. He'd been silent all day, playing with his old switchblade as he stared out the window. She'd tried to cheer him up. She'd baked him a cake, bought him a new switchblade, though she knew he'd never use it, he was too attached to the old one, and had even tried kissing him but he'd just push her aside and keep looking out the window. It seemed as though he was debating something. Finally, he slipped the switchblade back into the pocket of his old, purple coat and walked up behind her. He slipped his arms around her waist.

"You know, I have a lot of plans for the next five years."

She snorted. "Plans?"

"Okay, more like a general idea. Do you have any idea what my general idea is?"

She shook her head. She couldn't have cared less either. She was just happy to be together with him. She lived in the moment just as much as he did.

"I don't really know either. But it's big. And I just hope you'll be a part of it," at this point he opened his hand to show her what he'd been hiding inside. "Please say yes," he whispered.

She didn't. She couldn't. Instead she took the ring from him and slipped it on.

He turned her around and gripped her shoulders. "Are you sure?"

She wasn't but she nodded anyway. She'd worry about things later.

He'd told her that it was a symbol of how long they would be together: forever. Eternity. Even after death. She was his. The ring was just proof to show her and others.

She'd been happy then. She'd thought he was being romantic, telling her things like he would do anything to make her happy. She'd told him that she wanted him to stop worrying so much, to smile and just live. Now, nine months later, he was smiling, alright.

She knew he'd done it to make her feel better about her own scars. She knew it had been her own fault. But she still couldn't bear the sight of him despite the fact that she must look ten times worse. As she'd left, slowly backing away from him at first, too stunned to look away, she'd though she'd glimpsed the wounded look of a child who'd been so desperately trying to please a stern mother.

She knew about his past with his damn father and could understand his well hidden pain and yet she couldn't help but think of him with a small measure of contempt.

As much as he craved the pain of others, he craved his own to balance it out. He was always handing her the switchblade and begging her to hold it to his neck and when she gave in, he'd beg her to cut him "just a little" or at least hit him.

That wasn't to say that she couldn't think of him with love. Love was always present when she thought of him, more so even then the contempt.

Nothing with Jack had ever been simple.

And it had all started with that fucking proposal.

She almost smiled at her jumbled thoughts. She'd always had a weird sense of humor.

So should she go back for the ring?

In the end, she gave up. She crouched down next to the large puddle and found the ring almost immediately. She straightened up as she slipped the ring back onto her finger.

Goodbye, Jack, she thought as she walked away from her old apartment without much of an idea of where to go or what to do.

Behind her, she thought she heard the sounds of loud and obnoxious cackling but she couldn't be sure over the sounds of the thunder and lightening.

**This was just a story that I wrote on the spur of the moment, inspired by the story Strings. Ophelia isn't nearly as normal as she seems here. If I write a sequel you'll see what I mean. Please tell me if you want a sequel or if you even liked it at all.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Warning: my OC in this story is crazy. And please tell me if the Joker is a little OOC, I'll fix it if I write another part. And you don't have to read the long thing she recites from memory, it's Hamlet's soliloquy pondering the purpose of life.**

"Listen, O, I just don't think we're good for each other," Michael, a young businessman she'd recently started dating, said as he picked up his briefcase and stood up to leave. "Maybe as friends but. . . "

A false smile stretched across her once fair and aristocratic features. Ophelia was sure that she looked even worse with the fact that she hadn't been getting much sleep lately. She'd stopped taking her anti-depressants weeks ago.

"Is it the scars, Mike?" She found herself asking as he turned his back to her to leave. "I thought that they gave me a bit of mystery, something that makes other people think, 'hey, I wonder where she got those, she looks almost like the Joker.'" She laughed humorlessly. "Don't you want to know where I got them?"

She knew how those words affected people. They made people look at her in fear and think she was in league with the Joker. Wrong, she thought, gathering her blond waves into a ponytail. But Michael didn't know that. She started, "My brother was always a strange kid. He would always sit quietly in the library after school reading books like Catcher in the Rye, have you ever read Catcher in the Rye, Michael?" He didn't answer. He was too busy looking at her in horror. "Guess not. Don't, it's a waste of time. Anyway, one night, when I was eleven I found him sharpening the kitchen knives at three o' clock in the morning. He threatened me not to tell. Then he did this to my face, saying that if I told he'd do something even worse," at this point, she took out the knife that had been concealed in her pocket. "My big brother taught me so much."

Michael snapped out of it then and ran out of the diner.

Figures, she thought, discreetly sliding the knife back into her pocket. He was probably going back to that slut to tell her what she'd told him. She could already hear the slut, one of her best friends, denying it and going on about how sweet and pure Ophelia was.

She'd built that image after years of practice.

She heard the news blaring in the background. The gasps of horror at the news that the Joker had escaped yet again. She frowned as she slipped out of the booth and walked out. When would they ever learn that they couldn't keep Jack contained?

She watched the sky darken in the horizon and felt the exhaustion of the day slip away as excitement took its place. She had plans.

Tonight would finally be the night.

She caught a taxi and took it to her old apartment building. The one she'd had before she met Jack.

When she got there, she made her way quickly up the stairs ignoring the fact that the roof was twenty floors up. Her legs were hurting her terribly but she ignored the pain as she made it to the roof and saw the view of Gotham City, a sea of lights and sound below her. Everyone looked just as small and ugly as she did from that distance. They were all ants.

She danced around the roof feeling as though the world was spinning around her. She'd managed to suppress this part of her when Jack was still around. She'd been somewhat normal, hadn't she? Or maybe he'd caught it from her.

At this thought, she fell to her knees. She let her hair loose and wild as the world still spun around her. Everything was so chaotic, she thought. Hadn't everything been so peaceful and quiet five years ago?

Hadn't Jack stopped the world from spinning out of control?

She smiled humorlessly once more as she tipped her face up towards the sky and recited the lines from memory:

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action. -"

"Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember'd," a familiar voice finished from behind her before she heard clapping.

She smiled in pleasant surprise before turning and curtsying. "Why, thank you, kind sir, but I believe that was my line. And may I say that the paint covering your face becomes you."

"Why, thank you, darling," he said, walking closer. "But shouldn't you be reciting Ophelia's lines not Hamlet's?"

"You know I would've been named Hamlet if I'd been born a man."

"Thank God, you aren't a man."

She giggled as she stepped away from him and recited once again.

"To-morrow is Saint Valentine's Day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

Then up he rose, and donn'ed his clothes,

and dupp'd the chamber-door;

let in the maid, that out a maid

never departed more."

"O, can we stop with the Hamlet lines for a sec?"

"Oh, do you prefer Romeo and Juliet?" She grinned mischievously. He hated that play with a passion. "O, Romeo-"

"Shut up for a second, O!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently.

She paled as she felt the world come to an abrupt stop and she was grounded. She felt her violet eyes fill with tears as the memories of her childhood came crashing back. Her mother slapping her whenever she couldn't remember a line. She was supposed to be an actress right now, instead she was a disappointment that her mother couldn't bear to look at. Her father had looked at her though. He'd looked at her, kissed her, touched her, made love to her-

She shook her head trying to get the images out. She didn't want to remember. She dug through the pockets of her dress for her pills before remembering she'd thrown them away. She covered her face and walked closer to the edge of the building. "What do you want, asshole? You left me."

"I didn't expect to see you here. It's been five years. What were the chances of us running into each other?"

She frowned. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Needed a place to relax. It isn't that easy taking over Gotham."

"I didn't think it would be. But why'd you have to come here of all places? You'd only been here two or three times before we moved in together at your place."

"Does it matter?" He shook his head. "And, news flash, you left me."

She felt the anger boil up inside of her as she yelled. "Well, I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't done that."

He turned her around. "You wanted me to smile, didn't you, babe?"

She pushed him away from her before something occurred to her. The Joker always carried a knife and, if she was lucky, maybe, a gun. She smiled softly, the madness returning to her eyes. "Jack? Do I drive you crazy?"

"What?"

"I mean, I've heard you still tell our story at parties," she laughed. "If that's true it means I can still drive you crazy."

"Yes, you do. You are right now."

"Do you have a gun with you right now, Jack?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to give it to you."

"Why not?" She pouted.

"Because you are just so cute when you don't get what you want."

"Oh, okay, I'll just go back to my original plan then."

"Jumping?"

"Yup," she smiled sweetly.

"Honey, haven't we been over this the night you practically begged that mugger to shoot you?"

"I didn't beg him," she frowned again. "I asked nicely if he was going to before making sure he had a clear shot."

"I won't let you die, honey. Not as long as I'm around. It's too much fun watching you try to live a normal life before screwing it up somehow."

"You've been watching me?"

"No, but my goons have," he pulled her into his embrace before placing a mockingly gentle kiss on her forehead. "I'm not going to kill you. This way, I drive you crazy too."

"Why are you so much nicer to everyone else?"

He laughed. "They don't think it's very nice."

"They're so naive," she mumbled against his chest taking in his distinct scent.

He held her for a few moments longer, savoring the fact that for the moment she was all his. Finally he let her go. "Do you still have the ring?"

"I wear it on a chain around my neck."

"I keep mine in my pocket with my switchblade," he sat down on the edge of the roof.

She sat down next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. "You know, from up here, it feels like we own it all."

"I know," they were silent again, taking in the notices of the city.

"Maybe, I should start taking my meds again."

"Or you could just come with me."

She thought about it for a few seconds. "I'll think about. Give me a few weeks."

"Okay."

Soon he had to leave and she felt the exhaustion fill her once again as the world started spinning around her again. Then, she was running after him, running down the steps until she reached him. She grabbed him by the tie and pressed her lips firmly to his.

As their kiss deepened the world came to a stop once again.

"Make your choice soon," he whispered gruffly before pulling away and leaving her alone again.

**Please R&R!**


	3. Chapter 3

**This is sort of what happened during the five years they were apart. Please tell me if you don't like this or if something doesn't make sense to you. And please, please review or else I'll think you hate this. Please be completely honest.**

For the five years they'd been apart, Ophelia had been living with her brother. He wasn't the one who'd given her her scars of course but he was every bit as strange as Jack had been before he'd become the Joker.

Will was a quiet man who loved to work with his hands, making strange, miniature sculptures in his spare time and selling them for spare cash. He worked as a mechanic and loved his work even though he was a neat freak. But that wasn't what was strange. It was his room.

Occasionally, he would reluctantly ask her to clean it for him and she always agreed. She was happy to do anything to repay him for his help. The first time she'd been inside had been a shock to say the least. The entire room was red. The walls, the carpet, the bed, everything was red. At the head of the bed was the head of a bull and at the foot was a trunk that she never dared to open. She never wanted to look any deeper into his life then she already had.

As a child he'd sharpen knives in the kitchen at three o'clock in the morning, what was he into now? Did it have anything to do with that trunk?

She was slightly curious but she knew that it would be best for her if she never looked.

And that was how most of her five years had passed, sane and boring. That is until the police caught him in the act of raping and killing some poor teenage girl. In the trunk they'd found his strange sculptures mixed with notebooks full of his twisted sexual fantasies and his plans involving murder. He'd been planning to try cannibalism.

That was when she'd moved back to Gotham after extensive questioning from the police. She'd found a small but decent apartment near the cafe where she worked. She often found new boyfriends but they were always the ones who broke it off calling her a "scarred freak" once they found out about her meds or sometimes it was just because they couldn't stand the sight of her anymore. The scars drew them in, gave her of hint of mystery, but they also repulsed them.

That made her think of Jack.

Had it been her fault? She reflected. Yes, it had been. Even if she wasn't the one who scarred his face, she was the one who scarred his heart. Not that he wouldn't have cracked eventually but maybe. . .

She didn't know anymore. She couldn't think straight. She'd bought her pills from the pharmacy before coming home but maybe she shouldn't have taken them before she'd started on the bottle of rum.

At least the world wasn't spinning for the moment. Well, it was, but not quite in the same way.

She didn't quite know how to explain it. When she said the world was spinning, she meant that her thoughts were racing, her heart was pounding in her chest, and everything was just so loud. Sometimes she felt like she couldn't even breathe. But when Jack was around she felt normal. Well, almost normal. They'd laugh it off and talk about their day. He'd tell her to stop taking her meds. She'd tell him that she'd rather her world didn't keep turning into chaos.

She'd rather be normal. She was the most normal person in her family. But it wasn't enough. She would never be as normal as everyone else. And the scars just made it worse. Sure, she laughed it off and told Jack to live a little whenever he found her drunk after yet another coworker came up with yet another stupid nickname but it bothered her more than anyone could ever know.

The reason she'd stopped taking her pills weeks ago had been because Michael saw her take them. It didn't do any good to stop taking them but she figured that it had been worth the try anyway.

And this was why she wondered if it would be such a bad idea to join Jack. She might even get some revenge in the process.


End file.
